


hell is empty and all the devils are here

by halfmoonsevenstars



Category: Marvel 616, The Sandman (Comics)
Genre: Crossover, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-27
Updated: 2013-04-27
Packaged: 2017-12-09 17:46:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 5,466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/776243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/halfmoonsevenstars/pseuds/halfmoonsevenstars
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky has met all seven of the Endless at different points in his life, but he belongs only to one of them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Despair

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers up through Winter Soldier #14.

“St. Francis Alzheimer’s Hospital?” James frowns down at the file folder in his hands, as if staring at it hard enough will somehow change the typewritten rows of words.

“I’m sorry, James,” Natasha says softly. “I wish I had better news to give you.”

“No, it’s—it’s not your fault.” He sighs, his whole body slumping into the sofa cushions until he looks half his usual size.

Natasha sits down next to him, resting her hand on his knee. “I know it’s not, but I’m sorry anyway.”

James manages to smile at her, although it never even comes close to reaching his eyes. “I should go and see her. Soon. I mean…” He swallows, hard. “I mean, who knows how much time she’s got left?”

“Do you want me to come with you?”

He’s quiet for a minute or two before answering. “Natasha, it’s not that I want to exclude you, but—“

“But you want to get a reading on things first, and you don’t necessarily want _anyone_ around for that,” she finishes for him.

“Mostly. Yeah.”

“I understand.” Natasha gives his knee a light squeeze.

“I _do_ want you to meet her,” James says.

But Natasha doesn’t meet her on the second visit, or the third, or even the tenth. In spite of that, the room is never quite empty and they’re never really alone in it, what with the nurses and techs and volunteers flitting in and out, relentlessly and aggressively cheerful as if their optimism will somehow bring back their patients’ lives in full expansive Technicolor. James hates them all, because he can’t seem to rise to their level—it’s so _effortless_ for them, whereas he can’t even manage a genuine smile for his little sister, who lights up every single time he walks into the room.

All he can do is give her something brittle and plastic in return, hoping she won’t notice the cracks. She does anyway, because Becca has many problems with her memory now, and often she is more like a small child than a woman, but she is not stupid. She never was—and she can still read him like a book.

“You look sad, Jimmy,” Becca says to him abruptly one morning as he’s sitting on the edge of her bed while they talk, reaching up to brush her thumb across his cheekbone as if to swipe away any tears lingering there.

There aren’t any, but she’s not far off, he thinks.

 “Nah,” James says breezily instead, hoping it doesn’t sound as hollow as it feels. “I’ve just had a lot on my mind lately, s’all.”

Becca frowns. “Dad should lay off you. He doesn’t see all the nice things you do for everyone.”

“It’s okay, Becks,” he tells her.

“No, it’s not,” she says. “He only ever notices it when you get in a fight, and that’s not _fair_. I wish he wouldn’t yell at you so much.”

“Nobody yelled at me,” James tries to say, but Becca is having none of it, and she props herself up on her elbows.

“Where’s Dad?” she demands, her voice stronger than it’s been in a while.

“He’ll be home soon,” is all he can think to say.

“What has he been _doing,_ doesn’t he know how Ma worries when he’s out late?” Becca frowns. “He hasn’t been playing cards again, has he?”

“I don’t know.” It isn’t an untruth, exactly. James has no idea what happens after you die, but it has to be better than this.

Becca turns flat, dark eyes on him. “I hate it when you lie to me, Jimmy. _Where’s Dad?_ ”

“He can’t make it, Sissy. I’m sorry.”

“I’m tired,” she says, and flicks her blankets at him, a gesture of dismissal that’s been familiar ever since she was born.

Becca’s bed is huge, James thinks as he gets up to leave.

Well, not exactly. It’s an average-sized bed, the kind seen in hospitals and rehab centers and clinics and nursing homes everywhere. It’s just that Becca looks so _small_ in it.

“Like a little bird,” comes a whisper from the corner, and James whirls around, startled. It’s not often that anyone gets the drop on him like this, but—

He blinks a few times to clear his vision, but the woman is still sitting there on the floor, a small mountain of naked pearlescent-grey flesh with a knot of squid-ink hair on top of her head, though it’s starting to come undone and straggle down her neck like errant seaweed. A rat perches on her knee, watching interestedly as she drags a hooked ring through her flesh, over and over, her pointed teeth gritted in concentration.

She’s carved a ragged star into her left arm; it drips red all over the floor, just for him.

James doesn’t even bother pretending to himself that he isn’t running away. _That_ would be a lie.


	2. Delirium

it’s the worst headache of his life even worse than the time that roof caved in on him in arles but to be fair that was not his

fault it’s toro’s hey it’s not like i’m the one with an ignition already built in and

steve is so happy that they’re okay he doesn’t even get mad that they weren’t even supposed to be in arles at all and

steve

no no no no

i can’t

it’s too much steve why would you

why did he do this to me

why did he make me remember i should be dead couldn’t he have

just killed me instead

jesus is

this what they call a migraine i can’t even think it

hurts too bad right now

i don’t understand where the hell are

we and oh

a girl

what is she doing here

when did she show up how did she follow me nobody was supposed to follow me

go away just leave me alone he doesn’t want you here just no get out this is not for you to see i want to

i’m at fort lehigh but it’s empty and dark and cold but there’s a girl here too so it’s not really empty and the cube where

no more cube she says

and laughs soap bubbles out of her wandmouth until they shatter and fall to the ground all around me on the grass and he notices that her eyes are two different

colors but then there’s her hair which has a lot more than just blue and green

it’s like a rainbow almost but she still won’t go

away and he buries his face in his hands hoping when he looks up again she’ll be gone

oh i see that’s how it is well fine then i was gonna tell you something but since you don’t want to know then goodbye she says all in one breath

she leaves a trail of fish in her wake but they pop when i try to touch them

being alone doesn’t really help as much as he thought it might


	3. Destruction

Nobody talks to him for almost the entire two weeks he’s been staying at the hostel. Well, they _call_ it a hostel, but that’s too good a word for it. Yasha has really been paying two bucks a night to sleep with one eye open on a lumpy flea-bitten mattress in a filthy, cockroach-infested flophouse that had once been some nice family’s home, a long time ago. He finds that he doesn’t mind, though, because talking would only draw attention to himself, and though he doesn’t recall things the way he should, he very much does _not_ want to be found right now.

The uninterrupted solace ends one night when a man takes the bed next to his and asks if he’d like to play some cards. He has long red hair caught back in a ponytail that seems familiar somehow, rich and bloody and vaguely dangerous, and if Yasha thinks about it very hard, he can remember the way it looked when he ran his fingers through it, the scent of perfume. He’s still disturbed that despite everything, all the newspapers he’s been reading, all the radio programs he’s been listening to, he can’t quite remember anything beyond having been on a Greyhound bus recently, and before that, a train. He hadn’t liked either of those—too many people. It had made him itchy with discomfort.

So he’s not quite sure why he says yes to a game of gin rummy, although he suspects that the red hair has something to do with it. Yasha doesn’t even know how he knows how to play gin rummy in the first place—there isn’t much time for games, he’s fairly sure, even if he doesn’t remember what it is that he does for a living—but he _does_ find that it’s very pleasant. The man never gives him his name, but that’s fine; Yasha doesn’t give the man his name, either.

He’s also not even entirely sure that Yasha _is_ his real name. For one thing, his English isn’t accented at all, not in comparison with the other people here, the way he would expect it to. He suspects that it’s some kind of a code name, because who just winds up in New York with a bionic metal arm and no memory of anything if he’s just a normal Russian? The thing is, he doesn’t think he’s actually Russian. Not _really_ , though he can’t figure out why. He understands people on the street just fine, if they pass by him speaking it.

Of course, he voices none of these concerns to the man who had invited him to play cards. But it’s pleasant enough to play a few rounds before bedtime; the man is surprisingly cheerful and smiles a lot, though it doesn’t come off as forced. And he does most of the talking, for which Yasha is grateful, as his facility with words seems to have deserted him for now. (He knows that he _can_ be very good at conversations, but again, as always, the how and why of it eludes him.) They have to stop when it’s lights out, of course, and the man smiles when Yasha offers a rematch in the morning.

The morning dawns cool and grey, and he is greeted by four members of the NYPD. They don’t tell him why they’re arresting him, and they speak in Russian, which takes him a moment to figure out—longer than he would like, and the idea of being so slow to assess his surroundings makes Yasha very angry indeed. He fights back, hard, but even his metal arm doesn’t give him much of an advantage; he moves clumsily and slowly, as if he’s never used it in combat before.

“Quitting what you’ve been created to be is hard, isn’t it, James?” the red-haired man calls after him, and he almost doesn’t hear it because he’s so busy writhing and spitting and swearing at his manhandlers.

Yasha’s head snaps up to look at him, but even though the policemen have only managed to move him a few feet, the man has already disappeared.

The distraction is just long enough for them to stick him with a needle, and then Yasha doesn’t see anything again until they land in Moscow, where the General awaits him with an expression like a landslide.


	4. Death

The soldiers who come to break the news to him and Becca are tall, with wide shoulders like football players, and their hats are as stiff as their demeanor. And, curiously, they don’t seem to notice the lady who’s behind them. Bucky can just see the top of her head where she’s standing on the front porch; she’s got shiny black hair that’s almost distracting in the waning sunlight, with the way it reflects glints of red and gold. He would wonder what she’s doing here, since she can’t be from the army too or he’d have seen her before, but Bucky doesn’t have the time to think about it much because his sister flings herself at one of the soldiers, pummeling his barrel chest with her small fists and screaming, while he just stands there frozen, with the whole house closing in around him.

Eventually, the other one manages to pry her away, and Becca sinks down onto her knees, sobbing.

“Do you know where your pop kept his papers, Jimmy?” the first one asks, massaging his chest a little and wincing. “We’d like to try and contact any relatives. The office doesn’t open until tomorrow, and we didn’t think it’d be right to waste time with this.”

“In the bedroom, sir. Second door on the left,” Bucky answers, through numb lips.

So they leave him there in the front hall, with his sister still kneeling on the floor crying, because they don’t know what else to do, Bucky guesses. And that’s okay, because he guesses he doesn’t know what to do either. But once they head off down the hallway—not that it’s going to do them much good, because all they’ve got are some cousins in Boston who haven’t talked to Dad in years—the lady finally steps in from where she’d stayed out on the porch, and kneels down next to Becca. She’s pretty, although very pale, and dressed all in black, with a funny looped cross hanging around her neck.

“I’m sorry about your father,” she says softly, and scoops Becca into her arms.   

“Me too,” is all he can say, even though he knows there should be more to his answer than that, and Bucky stiffens his spine as he looks directly into the lady’s forehead instead of her eyes, because if he doesn’t, he might cry too, and Becca’s finally starting to calm down. There would be no good in getting her started again, not when he’s supposed to be the older brother and set an example.

The lady stands up after a moment or two, settling his sister on her hip. “Let’s go into the kitchen,” she suggests, and starts making her way there, even though Bucky hasn’t told her where it is.

“Ma’am?” Bucky asks, confused.

“I thought maybe a glass of water would be a good idea,” the lady answers him.

“Well, okay, but – “ He bites down on his bottom lip, hoping like heck he doesn’t sound rude. “I’m sorry, but who are you?”

“Some people call me Teleute,” she says, and keeps on toward the kitchen so that Bucky has no choice but to follow her.

“Tel—“ Becca tilts her head to get a better look at the lady. “That’s a funny name.”

“Beck!”

“Well, it _is_ , actually, so you’re not exactly wrong about that, dear heart,” the lady tells her, and gives Becca a light squeeze before setting her down and rummaging through the cabinets for two glasses, which she fills from the tap. “Here, this should help.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” Bucky replies, and then to Becca, “Both hands; you’ve broken three of these already.”

The water tastes almost sweet, and it’s very cold in spite of the fact that it’s summertime and the pipes normally don’t deliver anything that isn’t lukewarm at best, and it somehow does actually help, Bucky finds. It doesn’t entirely get rid of the ache between his shoulders, and it doesn’t dull the knife-edge that slices into his heart when he thinks about the fact that he and Becca are probably going to wind up separated. But Bucky doesn’t feel quite so overwhelmed anymore, and from the way Becca’s stopped shaking like a dry leaf in autumn, he can tell that she’s starting to feel better too. Well. Bucky hopes, anyway.

The lady—Teleute—is watching them, leaning against the counter. “Did that help?” she wants to know, once they’ve finished their drinks.

“I think so, yes,” he answers, and Becca nods too.

“Good.” She smiles down at them both, and reaches out to place her hand on Bucky’s shoulder. It, too, is cool—but soft, and gentle, and her touch is light even as she’s drawing him into her side. “You have a hard road ahead of you,” Teleute whispers to him, “but it will be a long one. I’m not ready for you yet.”

Bucky jerks his head up to look at her, but he doesn’t get to ask what the heck she’s talking about, they don’t even _know_ each other, because she gives him a squeeze and then ruffles his hair before breaking away.

“I’ve got to go, kids,” she says, “but you’ll see me again, I promise. Take care of each other, okay?”

She leaves just as the two soldiers emerge from their father’s bedroom with papers in hand, a noise like an enormous bird taking off in flight following her as the screen door shuts and her silhouette disappears from view.


	5. Dream

“You have a visitor,” Matthew informs me, more hovering in the air than he is actively flying, and I can tell that he is interested by this one.

There is very little that truly interests Matthew, which means that the likelihood of trouble is rather high. Still, as I haven’t had a visitor in a while – there aren’t many who think to search out the source of their dreams, although they are happy enough to analyze them endlessly once they’re awake – I find myself curious. Regardless, it wouldn’t do to appear overly eager, like the neophyte I still am even after twenty years, and so I slump a bit in my throne, allowing my chin to find its way into my upturned palm.

“What of it?” I ask.

Matthew shoots me a sly look, his beady little raven’s eyes even beadier than usual, and I know that he isn’t fooled by my outward insouciance. “You might want to talk to this one, boss. He’s been wearing himself out running all over the Dreaming. Doesn’t look like he’ll make it much longer if he keeps going at this pace.”

“And what is it that he seeks?”

“I don’t know,” Matthew says. “What do I look like, a goddamn bike messenger?”

I ignore his flippant tone, for now is not the time to keep someone waiting while we banter. “Does he know where he is, at least? Whose realm he’s in?”

“He knows he’s asleep, if that’s what you mean.” Matthew flaps his wings a few times, doing his best to get settled on the arm of my throne.

“Get off your feathered rump and bring him to me, then,” I tell him, swatting at Matthew—not hard, but enough that he understands I’m not playing around. “Don’t keep my guests waiting. It’s rude.”

If a raven could roll his eyes, Matthew would do it, but he takes off again, muttering something about how the last one knew how to make visitors respect him and it never mattered how long they waited anyway because time works differently here, don’t you know. I stifle the urge to laugh, instead tracing patterns in the air before me to help along a few people I’ve noticed who have gotten a bit stuck in their dreams. While time _does_ move differently here, it is not limitless, and I do not care to waste it.

They return not long after his departure, and I sit up straighter so that I can get a better look at our visitor. It takes me a moment to realize who he is, and I can’t help but smile.

“It’s been a long time since I’ve seen you here,” I tell my guest.

For his part, he pushes his metal hand through a mane of dark shaggy hair and studies me for a long moment before answering. “You look different,” he says.

“Yes, well, I suppose you haven’t been around much recently,” I reply, and wave my hand so that a second chair appears on the dais next to my throne. It’s not as grand, of course, but it’s very comfortable. “Sit down, James. Take a rest for once.”

“I get plenty of rest,” he protests, but he climbs the three stairs and joins me anyway.

“Perhaps our ideas of ‘plenty’ are different,” I answer. “I know what it is that you seek, James, but you won’t find her. Not here.”

His shoulders slump, and I can’t help but feel sorry for him in that moment. “I thought – I thought maybe that some part of her would be here. That maybe she—”

“Kept it safe, hidden from everyone but you, to retrieve at a later date? She didn’t, James.  I’m sorry. She _is_ here, with her own corner of the Dreaming, just like everyone else has. But while she exists to you, you don’t exist to her. She will only ever just be disappearing around the corner, the subway doors will always close behind her and leave you there on the platform—you’ll never get more than just a glimpse of her back to you. That’s all I can do,” I explain, and this is the part of my job that I like the least; it never gets easier to explain that even with dreams, not everything is possible. “You should stop trying. It isn’t doing you any good.”

His mouth tightens, and were I still mortal I would be afraid of him. “I’m going to find her. I’m going to get her back, Morpheus.”

“It’s just Dream now,” I correct him gently. “Morpheus was my predecessor.”

“Oh.” He runs his metal hand through his hair again. “Sorry. My mistake.”

“There’s nothing to be sorry for. You didn’t know him very well, did you? For all the time you spent wandering the Dreaming while your body slept in a glass tube, you never had the chance to get to know him,” I say. “It’s a shame. I remember that he did like you, in the short time he spent watching your dreams after he was freed and began setting things right again.”

“Oh,” he says again, looking bewildered. They must never have discussed the matter, it seems to me, judging by his reaction.

“Listen, James. You should give this up. It will only end in heartbreak,” I tell him, not to be cruel but because it is only the truth. “You can’t make her remember you, whether you’re here or in the waking world.”

“Maybe I _can’t_ make her,” James answers, lifting his head to look me square in the eye. “And, besides, I don’t _want_ to make her. But I’m damn sure not going to give up on finding the solution to all of this.”

“Then I wish you the best of luck. You’ll need it. There’s a hard road ahead,” I answer.

He smiles a little, though it is not a happy smile. “Your sister said that to me once.”

I lean forward, resting my chin on my upturned palm once more, though I am truly interested now, rather than actively cultivating a jaded affect. “Really, now?”

“I didn’t know she was your sister at the time,” he explains. “But she wasn’t wrong.”

“She usually isn’t. But then, she’s older than I am and has had a lot more practice than I have.”

James stands. “I should get going. But thank you for seeing me.”

“Even though I couldn’t provide you with any real assistance?” I want to know.

“You did, actually, believe it or not.” He smiles faintly. “The first thing they teach you about being a spy is that it’s what people _don’t_ tell you that tends to be the most important information of all.”

I’m at a loss for words, for the first time in I don’t really know how long, so I return the smile and clasp his right hand briefly, the one made of flesh and bone. “Good luck, James Barnes. I hope you’ll visit me again. You’re always welcome here.”

“I will.”

But he doesn’t.


	6. Destiny

One minute he’s riding the modified V2 rocket, willing to drop into the ocean with it instead of letting it land somewhere that might get a whole lot of people killed; the next, he’s walking in a garden, and he can’t hear Steve anymore. There’s nothing _wrong_ with the garden, exactly, it’s just—well, it’s not supposed to be there. This garden belongs to the rolling hills of an English countryside manor, or in the courtyard of some lovely Italian villa on the Mediterranean. What Bucky knows for sure is that it absolutely does _not_ belong on this rocket.

And to make things even weirder, there’s a man walking the garden path right in front of him, wearing a long hooded robe like some medieval monk, with his nose stuck into some huge leather-bound tome. Bucky trails him for a few minutes, meandering along the hedge maze behind the man, waiting to see where it takes them.

When it’s evident that this path is taking them nowhere in particular, he finally says, “Sir? What are we doing here?”

“I am always here,” says the hooded man, who does not pause, either in his step or in his finger following along the lines of text; nor does he look back. “ _You_ , however, are not. You are an anomaly.”

“Am I trespassing? I’ll leave if you want. I’m sorry,” Bucky says, stammering a bit in a way that he hasn’t done since he was very small.

“No, you’re meant to be here, at least for the moment,” the man replies, and he finally stops walking, though he doesn’t appear to stop reading, from what Bucky can see.

“Am I dead?” he asks. Bucky hadn’t _felt_ it, certainly—but that doesn’t mean he isn’t dead.

This time, the hooded man turns around, and he’s smiling. “No. You would be with my sister if you were.”

“Then where _am_ I? Sir.”

“You don’t know? I thought it was obvious.”

Bucky shakes his head.

“Look,” the man says simply, and turns his book so that Bucky can see it, although he doesn’t let Bucky take hold of it himself. It’s even more formidable on the inside than the cover had hinted at, deeply aged leather set in gold leaf and precious jewels; the thick vellum pages are slightly crinkled at the edges, turning the color of Earl Grey tea from being leafed through so many times, and the hand-written text is packed densely, perfect and miniscule. Bucky can’t help but marvel at it. The library on base had never held any book like this.

The funny thing is, it starts in English, flows into Russian a few paragraphs in, and then moves back to English toward the end. Bucky skims the English parts quickly, but they don’t make sense—he sees his dad’s name, and Becca’s, and of course, Steve’s, but later only Steve’s comes up, along with people he doesn’t know, called Sam and Sharon and Natasha. There’s other stuff, too, about a cube, and a registration act that somehow leads to courthouse steps, then an infinity formula. But it’s Natasha’s name that really catches Bucky’s attention, because when he backtracks to the part in Russian, it appears more than a few times, along with something referred to as Department X, and Moscow, and cryogenics, and then talk about upgrading a cybernetic arm?

“What is this? Why are you showing this to me?” Bucky takes an involuntary step backwards, immediately angry with himself for letting himself look weak in front of a stranger.

The hooded man sighs, startling Bucky with its heaviness. “ _I’m_ not showing it to you. I don’t write this book—it’s just here. It’s everything that ever was, or is, or will be, in all possible combinations.”

He knows better than to say that it’s impossible. Bucky’s seen too much that he’d always previously thought was impossible: kings who live under the sea, androids near-indistinguishable from men, super soldiers who always do what’s right even when it’s not easy.

“Is this my life?” Bucky is sure that he already knows the answer. It doesn’t matter anyway, as he doesn’t even get to ask the question, because the garden drops out from underneath his feet and his sleeve is caught on the V2’s fin and it won’t come loose and he can’t reach the bowie knife tucked into his boot.

When he opens his eyes again, the water has already risen up to meet him.


	7. Desire

Steve is dead.

Steve is dead, and he’s never coming back.

Steve is dead and I’m standing on this rooftop while Natalia busies herself with the pre-flight checklist so we can be on our way. I’m wearing a uniform with his colors; I have a cowl to cover my whole face, just like he wore; and I’m holding his shield. _His_ shield. It feels wrong in my hands, like it’s the ragged edge of a C-ration lid, instead of smooth and efficient and standing for all the right things.

For one split second I think about stepping onto the ledge and then taking one step further—but the wish is so fleeting that it barely has time to form, and I crumple it up and toss it inside the trash can where it belongs. But I’m not quick enough to banish it before the familiar scent of ripe peaches rises, lush and oversweet, and I close my eyes briefly, stifling the urge to sigh.

“You’re here,” I say, barely moving my lips so that Natasha won’t overhear me.

She smiles from the shadows, translucent and wavering like an exotic fish tank as they are, and her eyes are like a cat’s, amber-yellow and narrowed in amusement. “Of course I am.”

“What do you want?” I ask, because tonight I don’t have time to play games.

She flicks a lock of charcoal hair from her line of vision. “When have I ever wanted anything from you? I’m here because _you_ summoned me.”

“I did not.” I would fold my arms, but they’re a little occupied at the moment.

“But you did.” She nods, looking at the shield I’m clutching as if it’s some kind of security blanket. Not that it would work on the likes of her; she’s worse than any nightmare I’ve ever had. “You’re having a conflict about that. And about that costume you’re wearing.”

“It’s a uniform.”

“Well, whatever you want to call it, it’s giving you problems,” she points out.

“This was Steve’s,” I tell her, unnecessarily.

“And what’s the problem? He wanted you to have it, didn’t he? Do you not have sanction from that other little protégé of mine?” she asks. “Would you not be doing good work?”

I can’t keep my eyes on hers anymore, and I break my gaze, turning it instead to the city below me. I barely recognize it with so much ugliness on the streets; the sounds of it filter all the way up here, several dozen stories above street level. But it’s still a city that needs to be protected, whatever I think about its citizens or how the whole situation is being handled in general.

A smoke-grey hand cups my chin, forcing me to look up at her, and her smile softens. It still shows too many teeth for me to be entirely comfortable with it. “You silly boy,” she says fondly. “You’ve _always_ wanted this—we’ve talked about it enough, haven’t we? And now it’s yours for the taking. _Take_ it.”

I square my shoulders, hoping that it will keep her from noticing my shaking knees. “But how am I supposed to live up to this? To everything Steve was to people?”

She shrugs. “You can’t. You won’t.”

“That’s not very encouraging.”

 “Stop torturing yourself. You _can’t_ feel bad about getting what you want.” She tells me this like it’s the easiest thing in the world, to just stop feeling a certain way about something.

“Do I have a choice?”

“We all have a choice,” she says, and reaches up to ruffle my hair. “It’s just harder for you more than it is for most people. You try _so_ hard to be good. But you don’t want to be good, do you? You want to be _him_. But it wouldn’t be a bad thing if you gave up that particular wish. You would be a lot happier, and we’d see a lot less of each other.”

“As if you would really miss me?” I say, and I sort of mean it and I sort of don’t.

“Of course I would.” She leans in close, and the scent of peaches returns, almost choking me; they’re no longer simply overripe—rot and mold have set in,  through and through. “My siblings might know you too, but you don’t belong to them. You’re _mine_ , James Barnes.”

Her fingers seek my left hand, ghosting over them in a glacial mist that seems to dissipate once they touch metal.

“You’ve _always_ been mine.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title, "Hell is empty and all the devils are here," is a quote from _The Tempest_ , one of the two plays written by Shakespeare for Morpheus.


End file.
